Today I travelled up into the mountains to Relleu, the next village after Finestrat and visited a special unit which is home to 24 mentally handicapped adults. The unit is set in 10 hectares of land – which is slowly being regenerated by a team of volunteers, headed by Tony Grande of The Calpe Bed Centre, to who I take my hat off and have the greatest of respect.

The setting is so peaceful and beautiful, although rather challenging to find as it is tucked away on the outskirts of the village. Initially the unit was built to house young offenders and rehabilitate them, but the villagers caused uproar at the prospect and it never got off the ground. Eventually the unit was handed over to a charity and it has become home to those that many often forget about – whether consciously or not, as it is easier to pretend that they do not exist and get on with our busy lives.

The unit comes under the Emaus umbrella – which most people associate and assume is just to do with children. However, these 24, aged between 18 and 30 are there because they have no-one else to care for them and so are 100% reliant on the charity for their survival. The carers there really deserve a medal for what they do for them.

Every Thursday Tony and a group of volunteers arrive at the home to start work. His long term project is to turn the home into a self sufficient farm and they have started by ploughing up a small section of the land. Together with some of the more able residents they have been planting tomatoes, courgettes, onions plus other vegetables which will be used by the home and any extra will be distributed among the other Emaus homes.

There are many established olive trees within the 10 hectare and today the 10 volunteers – and a few of the residents were picking the olives, or rather knocking them down, which in turn will be exchanged by the local Co-Op for olive oil. By lunchtime they had collect half a trailer, equating to around 40 litres of oil, of which the home uses a vast amount. By the end of the afternoon they had collected 350kg!

I was taken on a tour of the facilities which were immaculate: the classroom, where the carers teach what many would consider simple primary school basics such as the days of the week, counting etc, but to those who are mentally challenged a real struggle. They have a recreation/chill out area with a television, games and (old) computers – except they haven´t be able to connect them up to the internet yet.

The arts & craft room was buzzing and some of the residents were busy making things and eager to show me – very important to keep them stimulated. I was truly amazed at some of the items that they had made – lavender bags, jewelry, brooches but the best was recycling Nespresso coffee capsules to make mini bouquets of flowers, mosquito curtains and Christmas ornaments. As well as giving them a sense of self worth they would like to try and sell some and plough the proceeds back into the home. If you know of any Christmas or Art & Craft fairs coming up please get in touch.

Every Thursday Tony goes to a local Cash & Carry where he buys food, often discounted with money raised by often generous ex-pats before heading to the unit. Funding is a real issue and in these financially challenging times there basically isn´t enough to run the home. In the Winter it gets VERY cold there but in reality they don´t have the money to heat the place – it is often a toss up with food or heating, so they put on an extra jumper. It cost 800€ to fill the gas tank up - and that only lasts them 6 weeks! You would have thought that the likes of Repsol, who announced that company profits from April to June 2014 was 520 million euros would help – wrong... what a sad society we live in where greed overtakes doing what is right.

Recently the volunteers planted 1000 olive saplings. Tony´s dream is to have each tree sponsored for say 50€ a year, handing each sponsor a certificate and tree number. This would potentially generate an income of 50,000€ for the unit, allowing them to run the home as it should be. They have some livestock there – a few chickens, turkeys, a couple of sheep and would like to develop this self-sufficiency program – to help the youngsters help themselves.

But it all comes down to the big M word – money. Coming up to Christmas many like to help, which is fantastic, buying toys for the children of Emaus. Sadly the adults get forgotten - what these residents actually need are basics such as toiletries, which will be appreciated more than something that will be potentially be discarded by the end of the week. Remember when your children unwrapped their Christmas gifts – usually they spent more time playing with the packaging than the contents.

Please take a minute to click on this link www.makeasmile.es and watch the beautiful video, showing the unit and what they are trying to achieve - and for those that can and would like, there is a donate button. If you could purchase any essentials such as shower gels, shampoo etc for which we would be eternally grateful then please drop them into Tony at the Calpe Bed Centre or get in contact with me for a local drop off point in the Benidorm area or I will come and collect them from you. Thank you.

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